this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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Exactly, if they voted for this, they deserve this.
I'm so sick and tired of this gleeful throw-people-under-the-bus attitude that effectively dehumanizes people because they "voted wrong," as if there aren't millions of people among Trump's voterbase who were effectively tricked by an entire network of con-men and grifters. As if there isn't a giant oil-baron-funded media machine working tirelessly to convince people of a smorgasbord of lies.
I find it disgusting how easily you and others with similar takes will cheer on the suffering of your fellows. And let the Republican Party off scot-free in the process. Because apparently blaming a bunch of people who – let's be real – by-and-large don't pay attention to politics is apparently more important than blaming the people who're deliberately engineering mass suffering. Not to mention how you're currently partaking in schadenfreude over a problem that's affecting many people you ostensibly agree with and care about! Everybody in America has to deal with the consequences of this bill!
Nobody in the U.S. voted for censorship or for fascism, save an extraordinarily scant few terrible, terrible people. If you decide that vast swathes of people "deserve this" all because of that few, I don't think you ever actually wanted to help anyone so much as you wanted an excuse not to have to care.
I tried the "have empathy" approach in 2016. It doesn't work.
This is the part where I would blame the Democratic Party for failing to provide a better road map for future. They were captured by neoliberals in Wall Street, in tech industry, etc. Of course, the Democrats are still miles better than whatever Trump is proposing.
For the average person, algorithm dependency in news consumption is increasingly becoming an issue with no effective ways to combat the problem. Google, Facebook, Musk controlled major platforms and they also have the money to influence real world politics.
I agree with your second paragraph, and find your third to be understandable (though I would contend that propaganda has been a problem for a long time now and wasn't made meaningfully worse by tech, just different). Where I lose you completely though is this comment's first statement.
Neither of your other points stated here back up a lack of empathy. In fact, they counter it, as you've provided two far better things to get mad at. I hope you haven't abandoned empathy because it didn't change minds, because empathy isn't supposed to be contingent on getting people to agree with you.
Okay, I guess I will try again.
Besides the big platforms and capitalism, I think I am also angry that so many people just decided to stop learning or being actively against the idea of intellectualism.
There are so many books being free in the age of internet. There are resources for one to break from the toxic right wing algorithm.But so many people just prefer to let "influencers" tell them what to think.
I understand why you're frustrated, but you've got to realize that the presence of resources that can break you out of bad thinking doesn't mean it's easy to break out of bad thinking, nor does it absolve those who duped you into the bad thinking in the first place. Cults work for a reason.
Just as an example, consider how hard it is to:
This is just a smattering of ways a path out of broken thinking can be more fraught than it looks. There are plenty more, so even in cases where these specific ones don't apply, that doesn't mean the person in question is intentionally ignorant or malicious.
If you're angry, be angry. I don't judge that whatsoever. I only ask that you be angry at the people deliberately trying to make everything worse, rather than the those who they're tricking. Get mad at the influencers, not the audience.